Last year on this site I wrote a little essay about The Pinewood Derby. Since writing it, nagging thoughts persisted; what had happened to my school since I was last there, nearly 30 years ago? Is it as I remembered? Is my grafitti still on the bathroom wall?* My foray into answering these questions led me down a tangential route; the intruiging and mysterious story of the architect of this, and most all the schools in my hometown of Maplewood, New Jersey, James Oscar Betelle.

My research is voluminous (and, I like to think, interesting) enough that it merited its own website to track my detective work. And thus, I present James Betelle, Where Are You? If you have even a passing interest in architecture, civic history, the machinations of suburban school politics or perhaps Russian royalty (??), the site is worth a look.

*I will address this eventually…

I like raisins. Really I do: in cereal, on stuffed cabbage, even straight from the box if need be. But I loathe them in oatmeal cookies. They’re just wrong being there, It feels like I’m biting into chewy little insect parts or something. I always thought this was a peculiar quirk of mine, but apparently I’m not alone:

“Contrary to what you’ve probably heard, a raisin is nothing more than a shriveled grape. And its inclusion here just oozes controversy. Like a concerted front against the oatmeal farmers (?) of the world. How do we ruin the oatmeal cookie? We’ll add dried, shriveled, rubbery fruit to it. Good. It’s settled then.”

I am a Star Trek fan. And when I say “Star Trek”, I refer to the television series that ran from 1966 to 1969, not the various incarnations that followed (except some of the movies). As a kid growing up in the 70s, Star Trek was a Saturday evening ritual (6 o’clock on Channel 11, before Dance Fever!) I loved all the characters; Kirk was the cool one, Spock the smart one, Sulu the dependable one, Uhura the sassy one and Chekov, well, the stupid one. But when it came time to “play” Star Trek in the schoolyard, I was always Scotty.

My friends always argued over who would be Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock, but no one wanted to be Montogomery Scott, Chief Engineer, except for me. Sure, Kirk had the swagger, and Spock was the real brains behind the operation. But Scotty, as far as I was concerned, was really in charge of the Enterprise.

Scotty fixed the ship. He drove it. He made the engines work. He managed to jury-rig a Romulan cloaking device into the dilithium chamber. Kirk gave the orders, but Scotty had the know-how to carry them out. How much cooler can you get? When I built plastic model kits of the Enterprise and flew them around my bedroom, it was Scotty’s voice in my head making them go, not Kirk bellowing “Warp..factor 5…”

So, as we climbed over jungle gyms and other knee-scraping apparatuses squaring against surly Klingons and egotistical Greek gods, I was the one who got to bark the now-cliched lines like “she canna take n’more!” or “I’m givin’ ‘er all she’s got, cap’n!” Works for me.

James Doohan, 1920-2005

Elementary school in the 1970’s still had the vestigial patina of post-war civic high-mindendess, so along with the book fairs, assemblies (when it was still ok to sing Christmas carols) and field trips to the local police station (we were fingerprinted!), the Cub Scouts came calling. I was never much of a joiner, but somehow became one anyway; probably because it meant for two days a week, I didn’t have to go directly home and could eat junk food at our local Den, the basement of our scout master’s house. But aside from this and the groovy blue and yellow para-military dress, the premier draw of being a Cub Scout was really The Pinewood Derby. (more…)